By John Klein (aka Saskboy) Imagine buying a house, and being locked out of the basement by the previous owner. That’s what digital locks do. If you’ve been following Canadian politics, particularly the new Copyright Act (Canada’s DMCA) Bill C-11, you’ve heard of “digital locks.” A digital lock, or Digital Rights/Restrictions Management (DRM), is a […]

By Eric Pettifor A new copyright bill has been introduced into parliament today, Bill C-32. I nearly wrote “anti-copyright” bill because, while I like the original idea of copyright, most of what governments have done to it in recent decades has been to its detriment. The idea behind copyright was that all creative works belong […]

By Eric Pettifor I was chatting with a friend about the high cost of textbooks, and he recalled a young woman of his acquaintance from his university days who made some extra cash by selling photocopies of textbooks. I didn’t ask how she did this. Did she hang around on campus wearing a big raincoat […]

Earlier this year, some US defense contractors travelling in Canada were concerned about a coin shaped device planted on their persons. “It did not appear to be electronic (analog) in nature or have a power source,” wrote one U.S. contractor, who discovered the coin in the cup holder of a rental car. “Under high power […]

This week we’ll examine impediments to accessing music in three realms: the digital, the fiscal, and the lithic. On the digital front, Steve Jobs seems about to walk the talk with regard to getting rid of digital restriction management (DRM). Last week Apple sent word to iTunes content providers that soon they will be able […]

Now that I’ve just about completely replaced all incandescent lights in my apartment with compact fluorescents (CFL), GE has announced a new, improved, more energy efficient incandescent. Eventually, they say, it’ll be better than CFL. What’s up with that, and why didn’t they do it sooner? The press release doesn’t say, and I won’t speculate […]

Avast ye, and listen well. Ol’ Joe Biden has turned his guns to North and is taking aim at our Great White Land o’ the Pirates, aye. Seems he and his Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus gave fair warning three years ago when they put us on a watch list, but e’en so we did not […]

What the devil are we going to do with all the power that the latest computers offer, given that soon you won’t be able to buy a machine with less than two cores on the CPU and less than a gigabyte of RAM? Well, one possibility that more and more people are taking advantage of […]

The wide release of Windows Vista this week, and the billions that will be spent to buy it over the next few years, prompts one to ask: how exactly did we get into this mess? Once upon a time, not so long ago, computers were big things owned by businesses, governments, and universities. That changed […]

By Alison@Creekside
The most interesting and innovative idea to come out of the first meeting of the all-party Special Committee on Electoral Reform, or ERRE, was Nathan Cullen's suggestion, … [Read More...]

By Jim Henshaw
There have been several bewildered as well as angry accounts coming out of the USA lately about how little media time has been spent covering the Democratic Presidential Primary … [Read More...]

By Frank Moher
On this dreadful day, I don't want to write about the shootings in Orlando. I want to write about my friend, Rick.
Rick lives just outside of Nanaimo, a city of about 80,000, … [Read More...]

By Frank Moher
Two drama nerds have recently moved into high profile positions. Before I name them (or perhaps you’ve already guessed who they are; or perhaps you’d like to scroll down and look at … [Read More...]

Originally published on Our Rape Blog, the author's account of the aftermath of a violent sexual assault.
By Mary Fraughton
Have you ever played Hearts?
It’s a card game. For our purposes, … [Read More...]

From Creekside: The B.C. provincial government is trying to green light the construction of a massive LNG terminal on Lelu Island in the Skeena Estuary -- Pacific Northwest LNG, backed by Malaysian … [Read More...]